Environmental sustainability, increasing global energy demands and the resulting rise in fuel cost and relatively new demand in developing economies for independent but less costly transportation is driving vehicle and powertrain designers towards smaller and more fuel efficient vehicles. It is not uncommon to find inline 3 and 4 cylinder engines powering many medium to small sized vehicles. However, these engines are length constrained by their inline cylinder configurations which operate to define the minimum vehicle architectural space in which they may be packaged. Narrow angle V-configured engines offer some additional packaging advantages by staggering pistons in offset banks, offering additional pistons and resulting power, without unnecessarily increasing the length of the engine package. However, engine height may suffer in such engines due to the use of a single cylinder head having a height beyond that required for an inline engine.